The seventh episode of ‘The Dalek’s Master Plan’, a twelve part epic with as good a claim as any to being the best ‘Doctor Who’ story, happened to fall on Christmas Day 1965. This was the first, and for the next four decades, only time that ‘Doctor Who’ was transmitted on Christmas Day.
In deference to the festive spirit the complex, even subtle, space adventure that ‘Master Plan’ was, made way for 25 minutes of fun and frolics unconnected to the main story, with the TARDIS crew visiting a Liverpool police station and a movie set in the 1920s.
With a script by Terry Nation (who had written for Hancock) and direction from the reliable Douglas Camfield, ‘The Feast of Steven’ should have worked. Based on the extant soundtrack and occasional photographs that exist from this ‘destroyed’ episode it almost certainly didn’t.
There’s little plot and, worse, few jokes. ‘The Feast of Steven’ is probably best summed up as a production with two facts. 1) the planned cameos by members of the ‘Z Cars’ cast fell through and left the show casting other actors as generic policeman and 2) the episode owes its title to Terry Nation’s inability to spell the name of regular character Steven Taylor. (Nation thought that, like the Saint whose feast day is 26th December, Mr Taylor spelt his name with a PH and spelled the title and the character accordingly in his draft. He came up with the punning title as a result of this confusion.)
What good can be said about the episode can be summed up thus. Hartnell relishes the oppurtunity to play comedy in ‘Doctor Who’ and Peter Purves (as Stephen, sorry Steven) does the same. Both are rather wonderful as a consequence. Purves’ comedy scouse accent (‘Everyone else is doing it so I thought I ought to’) is a particular joy as is the Doctor’s taking offence at being accused of being ‘barmy’. The episode also features a notorious final scene in which Doctor Who turns to the camera and announces to the audience ‘And a Merry Christmas to all of you at home’.
‘The Christmas Invasion’ it ain’t. That said, ‘The Feast of Steven’ is such a uniquely odd part of the history of ‘Doctor Who’ that of all of the destroyed episodes it is one of the ones I personally miss the most. I also know I’m not alone in giving a Christmas wish that ‘Voyage of the Damned’ should end in exactly the way that its predecessor of forty two years ago did.
Oh, and Merry Christmas to all of you at home from Shiny Shelf. Now go off and be nice to someone.
